February 5, 2017
We distinguish people according to the color of their skin, according to their age, their sex, their for-mation, their social position, their achievements, their political opinion: people come in very different ways. From time to time we may encounter someone who impresses us, not because he or she is white or young or male or female, because he or she is wealthy or sportive or hasThe gospel reading today is continuation of the teaching of the Beatitudes. Jesus uses the now familiar metaphors of salt and light, and a city set on a mountain, to describe the life of discipleship, that is to say the characteristics that should be found in the lives of his followers. I will concentrate on the metaphor of salt in today's gospel. In ancient times, lack of salt could drastically affect the health of entire populations. Trade in salt was very important, and salt was as valuable as gold, enough to be used as currency in some areas. Our word salary comes from it. Salt is a biological necessity of human life. Most of our food already has salt added, but if you are in the habit of baking your own bread, or cooking your own food, it's immediately and disastrously obvious if you forget to add salt. Salt was used in Jesus' time for flavoring, as a preservative, and as a healing agent. In calling us salt of the earth, He offers us a challenge and consolation not less timely in our day than in Jesus’ own. Let's us consider just three qualities of salt that may open our eyes to why He called us the salt of the earth. The first is simply that salt is salt. It has a unique identity. And if salt is to add any savor to the world, it must retain its own properties. As salt of the earth, it seems that we are called to mix with the world, but never to be assimilated to it. One of the problems of Christianity in modern times is the problem of identity. It is like Jesus telling Christians to be Christians. That sounds like tautology, but it is to say do not lose your unique Identity as Christians in the world. This does not mean isolation from the world but a proper and balanced engagement with the world without losing your unique identity as Christians. Retaining our unique identity does not mean to retreat from an engagement with the culture, as if it taints us by our very association with it. Authentic Christian life, or authentic discipleship is not one disengaged from the “concrete milieu” of the times. No! it rather means active engagement, in a way that the Good News which Christianity proclaims permeates into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new. The second quality is that salt gives taste. This salt power is a hidden power. It seems that Christ proposes the image of salt precisely because of the disproportion between its appearance and its effect. to the sense of sight, salt hardly even registers, it dissolves almost instantly in routine kitchen use. To the sense of taste however, salt makes all the difference. Salt belongs to that family of images with which Jesus reminds us that the true measure of spiritual progress is often hidden from our eyes. The Kingdom of God is like the salt, not the meal; like the leaven, not the loaf; like the mustard seed, not the tree in which the birds make their nests. The third and final quality of salt is that it causes hunger and thirst. The Church used to draw attention to this feature of salt in the rite of baptism used before Vatican II. There, the priest would pinch salt in the mouth of the baby to be baptized. He would then pray, after this first taste of salt, let his [or her] hunger for heavenly nourishment not be prolonged but soon be satisfied. This “heavenly nourishment” was an allusion, of course, to the Eucharist, to the true food and true drink that Christ wants to give us all. This should give us pause. Am I salt of the earth in this sense too? Does my life and witness make others hunger and thirst for God? We exhibit the preservative quality of salt when we stand by the truth and refuse to compromise our faith in moral questions, when we refuse to submit to the dictatorship of moral relativism. We are the salt of the earth when we refuse to pursue short sighted and selfish motives at the cost of common good and the truth. We are salt of the earth when we show commitment to social justice. Some of the activities that this commitment leads us to are given more concrete expression as the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. When we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, console those who mourn, and so on. When we do these things as a community of faith then we are indeed acting not only as salt but as light to the world, when our light of faith glows in this form we are then as a city set on a mountain that cannot be hidden..
Fr Sylvester Ajunwa, PhD